> But, presuming good faith on your part, then what were you trying to say? Nothing more or less than that the trait of being female is fundamentally different

> But, presuming good faith on your part, then what were you trying to say? Nothing more or less than that the trait of being female is fundamentally different from the trait of being conservative, so we shouldn't necessarily expect the relative absences of these groups in certain positions (in the general sense) to have similar root causes. Frankly I think your conclusion is too obvious to you, to the extent that you aren't considering other (fairly obvious) possible mechanisms, like the one another commenter mentioned (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20578689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20578689). I think he or she did a good job of articulating a similar point in a different way. Would you accept as a possibility that neither of these imbalances is due primarily to "hiring" bias? Or do you have some generally applicable evidence of the "hiring" bias you're talking about in either case, i.e. identity, physical or otherwise, being used to deny applicants access to a position? I'm just saying the question is more complicated than you're making it out to be; I don't claim to have the answer. It seems that you are claiming that, and IMO you're reading between a lot of lines to cast other commenters' words in the form you're looking for. ("hiring" in quotes above because I think a lot of young women are put off STEM while they're still in school, despite the fact that they would not have had any trouble getting into the program(s))